


Break Your Rules

by kyunaquarius



Category: LOONA (Korea Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Enemies to Friends to Lovers, F/F
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-08-29
Updated: 2020-08-29
Packaged: 2021-03-06 20:49:15
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 12,069
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26175262
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kyunaquarius/pseuds/kyunaquarius
Summary: That night, after Heejin fully falls asleep, Hyejoo closes the light in their room and opens the lamp hanging over her bed. Going over to the desks, she walks freely over the imaginary line that has divided them for the past month now.Heejin keeps a pad of post-it notes on her desk. Hyejoo knows this because she needed one the other night - had looked over to her roommate concentrating on her notebooks, paying her no mind. She never asked because she knew she wouldn’t get it.But with Heejin asleep, and Hyejoo having been the one who helped her there, she feels at liberty to go over and pick it up with the pen next to it. When she presses the tip on the paper’s pink surface, it bleeds silver.
Relationships: Ha Sooyoung | Yves/Kim Jungeun | Kim Lip, Jeon Heejin/Son Hyejoo | Olivia Hye, Kim Hyunjin/Park Chaewon | Go Won
Comments: 17
Kudos: 75





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [donichikon](https://archiveofourown.org/users/donichikon/gifts).



Hyejoo stares hard at the clutter of boxes and bright pink luggage that seem to cover nearly every inch of one side of the room. Some of it spills over to the area she had claimed as her own, which she had kept tidy enough to her own standards - only a few pairs of sneakers and boots near the door, a modest collection of books on the shelf above her desk, and nothing else but pillows and linen on her mattress. The rest of her belongings are stuffed inside her designated closet and under her bed where they could be disorganized in private.

In the room's stuffy air, she sighs as she forcibly brushes up the dark strands prickling the back of her neck as if they would latch on to her messy bun on their own. “Unbelievable...” she whispers, hands on her hips and lower back. Before leaving her dorm room to attend to her classes, she had made it a point to be as little of a burden as possible to her roommate who would be arriving later than the rest of the university's students.

Clutter isn’t even the right word for it - the boxes are stacked relatively well according to size, and the bags seem to have been placed down with care. It’s just the sheer volume of them - some have ended up on Hyejoo’s desk and the floor around it simply because there was nowhere else for them to go. Regret over not rushing back after her classes starts to seep in.

“This is Sooyoung-unnies fault,” she says to herself. If Hyejoo hadn’t let herself get dragged to the first meeting of Sooyoung’s newly established Mukbang Club - specifically started as part of a master plan to ask out a cute girl she saw last semester - she might have arrived early enough to stop this. Instead, she is worn and tired on the first day of classes after losing rock paper scissors, forcing her rush to a store to buy bags of coal for the extremely ill-organized barbecue to start the school year.

She walks over to the end of the narrow room toward the desks, past the two beds shoved against opposite walls. It isn’t a lot of space, but all of the lowerclassmen dorms look like a furnished shoebox. As she reaches for the electric fan’s string to tug it twice and open, she nudges some of the things on her side of the room to the other with her foot, making the things already there crunch and bend to make room

When there’s enough room for her to pull back her chair, she huffs as she sits down and toes her shoes off. She brings out her phone, thinking of asking Chaewon if it would be impolite to leave her roommate a strongly-worded note on the first day of university.

But she barely finishes typing out her text when the door to the room opens. Out of stubbornness, Hyejoo stops herself from turning to see who it is. She already knows; who else could it be? Maybe not the specifics, but the only thing she can think to do in retaliation is not acknowledge the other girl in the room.

The door closes slowly, more quietly than it had opened, the perpetrator likely adjusting to Hyejoo’s silence. “Um… hi!” she hears the voice say, the uncertainty it had started with bleeding off to high-toned optimism. “I’m Jeon Heejin! Second year student, I just transferred. You must be my roommate!”

The girl draws closer to her, and Hyejoo lets herself look up and turn to see her roommate who lowers her head slightly at her. All Hyejoo can do is raise her brows in response, lips still pressed in a line. 

And - okay, she’s pretty. Or at least her smile is, the shape her lips make complimenting the way her cheeks puff slightly, a pleasing contrast against the strong frame of her jawline. It’s nice, so much so that Hyejoo can’t help but think she must be used to commanding pleasant responses with it alone.

But the thought disperses as soon as Heejin stops in the middle of the room and sits down at the edge of the bed - _Hyejoo’s_ bed, given there isn’t much space on hers. Hyejoo tightens her jaw, eyes growing sharper, but it doesn’t seem to deter the other.

“And you are?” Heejin smiles, leaning toward her slightly. The epitome of welcoming, despite the state of their room.

Hyejoo blinks, wondering if it would be childish to withhold something like her name. With her teeth clenched, she gives Heejin a half-hearted smile. “Son Hyejoo.”

As if she had heard something far more interesting, Heejin nods and says nothing, as if waiting for Hyejoo to say more. When it doesn’t happen, she takes a deep breath and hits her palms on her thighs. “Well! It’s nice to meet you, roomie,” she says.

“Mm.” Hyejoo nods slowly, places her arm over the backrest of her chair. She lets the silence between them stretch a little more. What was it going to take to put Heejin’s energy down a notch?

She gestures to Heejin’s belongings, only realizing then that the color choice is far outside her understanding. “So. Is pink your favorite color?”

Heejin’s mouth opens and closes before she lets out a small laugh. She tucks her hair behind her ear then says, “Well—yes. It is, but to be honest, my parents bought all those bags for me _forever_ ago.” She looks down for a quick second before continuing, lacing her fingers together on her lap. “My favorite color might be their favorite thing about me, you know? It’s that kind of weird situation. They found out when I was a kid and just never forgot.”

Hyejoo nods. “Right. I see,” she says, eyeing the absolute amount of Heejin’s things again. She doesn’t quite understand why one would bring so many things to a university dorm, assuming that parents who can afford to buy such nice luggage would provide for everything else in extra.

With no interest in an extended conversation, Hyejoo stands up quickly, the legs of her chair lightly hitting the bags on the floor. She picks up the bright pink duffle bag at the end of her desk and places it on top of the pile.

“I would appreciate it if you could put your stuff away,” she says as she walks toward her closet. “As soon as you can.”

“Right! Of course, absolutely. I just got here and immediately wanted to explore the campus,” Heejin reassures with a nod. “This school is really nice, the fields are so big! And I didn’t get a chance to go around before, so I thought I could before my studies take over…”

With Hyejoo behind her closet’s door and out of Heejin’s sight, it starts to sink in that this is about to be her life for the rest of the year. Stuck with a girl who seems to talk too much and has no sense of common decency. The dread that creeps up on her makes her recall Yerim’s words of advice before she left her hometown: _Just communicate that you want people to respect your boundaries! And be nice!_

So she picks out a set of clean clothes and closes the closet, turning to Heejin who still looks as hopeful as ever to get to know her. She takes a deep breath before saying, abruptly, “I think it would be better if you kept your things on your side of the room.”

Hyejoo gestures her hand through the air in front of her, implying an equal divide of their shared space. “It would be best if we imagine a line here…” She swings her hand toward Heejin’s area. “And that we stay out of the other’s side.”

And that’s what does it, what seems to catch Heejin off-guard enough that she drops her smile and stands up from Hyejoo’s bed as she realizes she probably isn’t welcome on it. “Of course,” she says quickly, tone shorter than it was before. She hesitates before she takes three steps toward her own bed. 

Okay - maybe Hyejoo was a little too heavy-handed with setting her boundaries, but she stands her ground. "Great," she says with a sigh. With nothing else to say, she walks over to their shared bathroom and closes the door behind her. 

Only to see _another_ bright pink bag on the floor by the shower. 

\--

"Chaewon-a! Help us go through these application forms and tell Hyejoo to be nice to her roommate!” Sooyoung says as she waves the younger blonde over to the outdoors table where they’re seated.

“ _Aw, Hyejoo._ Starting trouble already?” Chaewon says as she sits next to her and drops her bag on the floor. Hyejoo faces her with a slight pout, sliding a few sheets of club application forms to her.

Instead of answering, she tattles, “Unnie’s not actually checking the forms, she’s just going through them to see if the girl she likes applied.” The two sophomores met Sooyoung when they volunteered to help the Dance Club put up a show during last year’s holidays for extra class credit. Spiteful that she wasn’t given a part in the show itself, she took it in her own hands to make her backstage duties as fun as possible by befriending her prop-making staff.

Hyejoo is absolutely the kind of student who would need extra credit just to pass a class. She tends to treat college as a vacation away from her dreadfully boring hometown filled with dreadfully boring people that she never got along with. All she cares about is accomplishing enough to keep her place in the school, which is why she chose to major in creative writing.

Sure enough, Sooyoung is already checked out of the conversation, still rifling through the pages and only glazing over the top. “How many times has she gone through these?” Chaewon asks Hyejoo.

Sooyoung continues, only saying, “ _Kim Lip_. Her name is Kim Lip, everyone, please tell me if you find her.”

“This is her third round. For someone taking up geology, you’d think she’d be using her digging skills for something else,” Hyejoo replies, smug though it doesn’t last long as Chaewon immediately moves her discerning gaze at her. “What?”

“I thought you were nice to your roommate!” Chaewon ribs at her, flipping through the application forms without glancing at them. “You told me it went well.”

“ _It did,_ ” Hyejoo insists, shoulders hunching forward. “It did!”

Chaewon remains unconvinced, and Sooyoung manages to snort amid her search. “Tell her what happened,” the oldest of the girls says.

Hyejoo has half the mind to keep it to herself, but she rolls her eyes and explains, “When I woke up early today, she wasn’t in the room anymore, then when I left the dorm, I saw half of her stuff just piled outside our door.” She averts her eyes and mumbles, “You should’ve seen it, all the pink in the halls was an eyesore…”

Chaewon wrinkles her brows. “Isn’t it against the rules to leave things outside your room?” she asks. “Those could get confiscated, it’s in the dorm contract.”

Hyejoo shrugs. “What was I supposed to do? I didn’t want them back inside the room.”

“Did you at least tell her?” she asks. Having gone through all of the forms in her hand, she passes them back to Hyejoo.

She takes them with a huff. “How was I supposed to? I don’t have her number. I told the dorm supervisor because someone might steal her stuff, isn’t that enough? Besides, it wouldn’t hurt to have less things…”

“They’re definitely gonna get confiscated,” Sooyoung quips, now making a separate pile on the table. “Wherever they keep the stuff that’s taken must be a gold mine at this point. It’s a pain in the ass to get anything back from the supervisor.”

Hyejoo knocks the toe of her boot against Sooyoung’s sneaker. “You’re no help, you know that? What kind of unnie are you?” 

Sooyoung doesn’t mind it, only frowns and looks closer at the forms that she separated. “Maybe Hyunjin is right, I might’ve misheard her name…”

When Hyejoo returns to her dorm, the bags outside their room are no longer there. Inside, the lights and the fan are on, water in the bathroom running to tell her where Heejin is.

The room is already a lot tidier than it had been the previous night, which is a relief, but Heejin’s side of the room is a lot more decorated with posters on the walls, more pillows in silk cases on her bed, and fairy lights wrapped around her bed frame.

Hyejoo kicks off her shoes toward her side of the room and plops down on her bed. Maybe things are okay, she thinks to herself. And if they aren’t - she doesn’t have to be friends with her roommate as long as they can co-exist. Right?

Even as she convinces herself to stop thinking about it, she can’t help but pay close attention to the sounds coming from the bathroom. Water hitting the tiles, hair product bottles knocking together, the shower curtain getting pulled back. From there, her mind drifts. Because of her stubbornness, she wasn’t able to get a good look at Heejin when they met, but she’s able to put together the few striking features she remembers.

Spools of hair just a bit lighter than her own. Soft doe eyes, a mole under the left. Her shoulders, Hyejoo imagines, holding a few drops of water from the shower. She bites her lip. Maybe she had let her bad mood get to her last night. And maybe it’s the guilt that follows her thoughts that stops her from opening her eyes and turning to Heejin when the door opens.

What she doesn’t expect is the way the door closes - sudden, loud with a bang that makes the room feel like it’s much emptier than it really is. Hyejoo doesn’t just open her eyes; she sits up in a shock, and she realizes that Heejin isn’t even looking at her. The other girl, now dressed in slightly damp sleeping clothes, adjusts the towel wrapped around her head and walks toward her desk. If she notices Hyejoo there, she doesn’t show it.

Quickly, Hyejoo starts to glare, her gaze following as the other crosses the room to take a seat and press a button on the speaker on her desk. Music starts to play, the volume rude enough to someone who hadn’t as so much been acknowledged yet. Heejin flips open a magazine, her back turned toward Hyejoo.

A few seconds pass, a sharpness growing in Hyejoo’s chest. The insult of being ignored feels bigger than it really is when all she can compare it to was the hesitant, clueless sweetness Heejin had first shown her last night.

“Excuse me? Hey!” In one quick motion, she stands and reaches over to slap her hand over the speaker’s play button. “What’s up with you?” she asks, words stinging in the quiet air.

“ _Me_?” The boldness in Heejin’s voice is a distant shoot from how she had spoken to Hyejoo last night. “What about you?” Heejin turns and stares at her, meaningfully hard, then looks at where she’s standing. “Can you stay on your side of the room? Thanks.”

Her shoulders drop, and it takes Hyejoo a few beats to realize that she had crossed the boundaries that had originally been her idea. She doesn’t move, too struck to acknowledge her own brusque behavior from last night.

Instead, she points at the bathroom door. “What was that? Just now,” she says, tone far off from friendly, steady to rise. She’s never been one to yell - in fact, the only person she’s ever shouted at is her older brother. “Do you have something to say to me?”

Heejin is quick to reply, though her own voice stays low, dipped in frustration. “Something to say?” She closes the magazine in her hands like a slap, stands and steps toward Hyejoo. “There’s _plenty_ I have to say, but I don’t want to waste my time talking to someone who can’t keep their hands off my stuff.”

Hyejoo is only just about to wrap her mind around Heejin’s accusation when she realizes that she’s walked close enough to her that she can sense that Heejin’s skin is a little wet. She averts her gaze to the hollow of the other’s throat so she can look at anything but her piercing eyes.

She steps back. She goes over that imaginary line, her jaw clenched.

“I did not touch your stuff,” she insists, voice going low to say it firmly. “I haven’t done anything to your shit. You have no proof - you don’t even have the right to imply that.”

Though she knows it’s true, Heejin’s scoff almost plants doubt in her mind. Mostly, it irritates her further.

“ _Please._ The supervisor said it to my face,” she says with a malicious twist of her expression. “You - you fucking told on me,” she adds, her voice faltering, more hurt than anger, but it doesn’t last. “You told on me! How old are you to still be telling on people you don’t like?”

“I didn’t tell on you!” Hyejoo knows that - right? She did what she could, what was within her means. “Don’t you know you’re not allowed to leave shit outside the dorm? That’s common sense!”

“I was gonna come back for it!”

“Well - maybe you should’ve said something!”

“Sure.” Heejin scoffs, turning away as she rubs her hand down the side of her face. “Like you would’ve liked that, the way you treated me yesterday. You know, you’re lucky I didn’t have anything essential in those bags, or I _swear_...”

“Why do you have so many things with you, anyway?” she says slowly. “It’s - it’s not normal. You know that right?” Hyejoo narrows her gaze. “It’s fucking weird.”

At the corner of her eye, she sees Heejin’s hand close into a fist. She says nothing. As if it was a comfort, Hyejoo’s shoulders relax.

“You’re spoiled, aren’t you? Ah…” she continues, her tone evening out. She nods at her own hypothesis, and she lifts her chin. “That makes sense.”

The glare on Heejin’s face deepens. “No, it doesn’t.”

Hyejoo shrugs. “Only someone who has more than enough shit would freely leave their things out where someone could’ve stolen them.” This is all easy to piece together for her - Hyejoo has spent enough time around people her age who needed to worry about money. The memories of comparison and inadequacy would hurt if they didn’t make her so mad instead. “So that’s all this is,” she says, a hand quickly gesturing to Heejin’s fuming figure. “A tantrum. Right?”

As she goes on, Heejin’s posture starts to change, her every breath made more evident as they wrack her torso. “You have no idea what you’re talking about,” she replies, what Hyejoo assumes she might think is a warning.

“Well, it’s fine!” Hyejoo says, feigning friendliness. “I’m sure your parents can replace everything you lost. If they bought you all those bags, they won’t have a problem buying you more. Right?”

“Shut up,” Heejin says, almost a whisper. “Just shut up, you don’t know anything about me.”

“I know enough.” She smiles, ingenuine, the first of its kind that Heejin has gotten from her. “Word of advice, you should care more about where you put your things. Don’t leave them lying around where they could bother other people.”

The pause in the air is as long as the breath they both seem to take. This time, Heejin yells, her cheeks turning pink, “ _That’s why I put them outside! I was trying to fix my shit!_ ”

Hyejoo is shell-shocked, mouth agape, feeling as if a gust of wind had just blown on her. She’s never angered someone quite this quickly before; as unfamiliar as it is, she prods at the feeling. “Then don’t fucking blame me for it,” she spits back, body leaning forward.

“Then stop being a bitch and mind your own business!” she says, unswayed by how Hyejoo refused to back down, not quieting in the slightest.

By then, Hyejoo bites down on her tongue, figuratively and literally. The things she could say. She stares at the other girl just as hard as she’s being looked at, the fire in Heejin’s eyes hard to tear away from as much as it is unexpected.

Deciding she’s had enough, that absolutely nobody was allowed to yell at her, Hyejoo raises a dismissive hand at Heejin. “Fuck this. Good luck getting your shit back,” she says.

Hyejoo turns and walks away, tipping her toes back into her shoes without lacing them on properly. She grabs her bag and leaves for Chaewon’s room.

She doesn’t know how strongly she shuts the door, but she hopes it’s louder than what Heejin attempted earlier.


	2. Chapter 2

The days that follow are some of the most restless Hyejoo has ever had in university. When she was roommates with Chaewon last year, things couldn’t have gone better. At the very least, she could come back from her classes, lie down, and not have to face the wall the whole time because she didn’t want to have to look at her annoying roommate. Sadly, only incoming juniors and seniors have the privilege of choosing their roommates. 

When Heejin and Hyejoo are in their room together, it’s dead quiet. Heejin almost always has her earphones on, and she walks briskly around the small space they have when he needs to get something. Hyejoo can tell that her presence is unwanted. If she leaves something on the floor, like a bag or a sweater, and it crosses that invisible line, Heejin will wordlessly kick it back toward the other’s side of the room.

Ever the petty, hard-headed person, Hyejoo always does the same. It’s safe to say that any guilt that she might’ve had over letting Heejin’s things get confiscated quickly diminished to nothing.

On the other hand, she tries not to spend too much time there. Instead, she bothers Chaewon and her new roommate, Hyunjin, whom she readily befriends, though it’s weird to watch the two interact. Their conversations are mostly banter, taking jabs at each other and whatever it is they’re doing, and little of anything else.

Between Chaewon and Hyunjin, the opinions on Hyejoo’s argument with Heejin goes two ways. While Hyunjin thinks that Hyejoo should at least take some responsibility for what happened, Chaewon believes there’s nothing she can do to make things better anyway; Heejin’s things would’ve been taken away eventually.

Soon, the heavy silence that surrounds Hyejoo’s dorm room becomes a contest of who can bear more than the other. After how they spoke just a day after they became roommates, with how much Hyejoo said and how loudly Heejin yelled, it seemed like they were simply trying to push each other to the same limits rather than _coexisting_.

Some days, Hyejoo will come into the bathroom and find her bath towel unnecessarily damp and crumpled on the floor, which only means Heejin will find her shampoo bottle in the toilet bowl from time to time. 

\--

Still, there are days when they do speak.

Truthfully, Hyejoo doesn’t know much about Heejin that her roommate has shared herself. Assumptions aside, everything she knows is based on observation. One thing is that Heejin seems to take pride in taking her classes seriously. She keeps a large notebook on her desk, and she spends her nights rewriting all of her notes for the day into its broader pages.

Sometimes Hyejoo can hear Heejin switch between colored pens and highlighters when she’s on the brink of falling asleep. Whenever she stretches and shifts on her seat, the light from Heejin’s desk lamp pulses and fades against the wall Hyejoo is usually facing.

She thinks it’s laughable, the hours Heejin will allow stretch just to ace a test that would ultimately prove useless in a few months.

One morning after one of those nights, Hyejoo skips her first class in favor of playing PUBG on her laptop. After her second match, she hears a faint ring, unfamiliar only because of how softly it comes.

She turns in her seat, gaze zeroing in on Heejin’s digital alarm clock that sits right at the edge of her desk where it meets the head of her bed. Thankfully, this one is in a normal color, chrome with buttons painted grey, though now the numbers on its screen are fainter than they used to be. It’s gone off in the past while she was trying to sleep in, so she smirks to herself when the other girl doesn’t stir in her slumber. This doesn’t concern her - if anything, it’s in her favor that the wretched alarm clock’s batteries are finally dead.

Heejin is laying on her belly, arms folded under her head’s pillow. Hyejoo knows, from the depth of her roommate’s sleep and the current time day, that she must be _exhausted_. That even if they didn’t hate each other, she would feel bad to have to wake her from the peace that she seems to be in.

Before she fixes her headphones over her ears, she thinks that the peace suits her, suits her so much better than the irritation she’s more accustomed to seeing in Heejin’s face. A few minutes later, the alarm clock gives a few more sorry attempts at ringing, but Hyejoo is already paying attention to something else.

“Fuck!”

Caught off guard by the yell that comes about an hour later, Hyejoo’s shoulders jump up as she shoves her headphones down her neck. She’s still shocked when she looks to Heejin’s side of the room, but it fades into amusement when she sees Heejin panicked and pulling clothes out of her closet. She slams the doors close before walking hurriedly to the bathroom.

Hyejoo lets out a short laugh to herself. “Yikes,” she whispers, hearing the sharp clatter in the other room. When Heejin comes out, she’s browsing lazily on her phone, though she watches her from the corner of her eye.

She’s visibly upset - the kind that makes one unpredictable. “You could’ve woken me up,” Heejin says, stuffing a few books into a bag. She’s glaring, but she isn’t looking at Hyejoo. “You _know_ I have class, and now I’m an hour late.”

Hyejoo clicks her phone close and resorts to fully watching Heejin. “Do I?” she asks. “I guess your roommate is just too much of a bitch to care.”

The response makes Heejin forcibly zip her bag. Her movements are rough, abrupt aa she slings it on her shoulder.

Hyejoo keeps going, “Didn’t you tell me to mind my own business?”

This time, Heejin spares her a sharp, poisonous look. As soon as she turns for the door, Hyejoo thinks it’s done there, but she stops just before she pulls the door open.

“You know,” Heejin starts before pausing as if she’s still debating on what to say. “Just because you don’t seem to care about anything doesn’t mean you can just take others down with you.”

\--

Ironically, the unwelcoming situation in her dorm leaves her no choice but to entertain Sooyoung’s requests to come to her solo room and help with the Mukbang Club. In the span of a few weeks, Hyejoo had successfully put up the club’s social media page, which gets multiple new followers every day.

“Hyejoo! Come here,” Sooyoung calls as she scrolls through her phone, the tips of her chopsticks still poised near her mouth while she chews on the last of her noodles. So far, the Mukbang Club’s budget has been spent buying snacks for all of its six members. 

Hyejoo, already in her pajamas and snacking on a pack of nori, drops down next to Sooyoung and leans over, partially blocking the screen and making the older girl nudge her side. “ _Hey._ What is it?”

“Look at her. Isn’t she cute?” Sooyoung asks. She turns her phone screen toward Hyejoo who squints to look. It’s an Instagram page from a username she can’t recognize, but her eyes widen when she realizes she recognizes one of the two people in the picture.

“What the hell?” she complains, pushing the phone back toward Sooyoung. “Why are you showing me that? Gross, what’s wrong with you?”

“ _Gross?_ ” the other shrieks. “How dare you! That’s Lip!”

“No it’s not!” Hyejoo argues with a laugh of disbelief. She continues with a grumble, “That’s Heejin, my shitty roommate.”

Sooyoung gasps and shoves her phone at Hyejoo again. “That’s Heejin? She’s friends with Kim Lip! This is _fate_.”

Hyejoo looks at the screen with a frown. “Give me that.” She snatches the screen out of Sooyoung’s hand to inspect further. It’s disorienting to see Heejin like this. _Smiling_ , wide and genuine for a selfie with another girl.

The post is a week old, and the caption reads _REUNITED AND IT FEELS SO GOOD!!!! 💃💃_. As much as Sooyoung wants her to see what Kim Lip actually looks like, Hyejoo doesn’t shift her focus. Or rather, she can’t - this person in the photo that’s supposed to be her roommate seems so different.

Different enough that she has no problem thinking that she’s pretty. _Beautiful_ , even, in such an annoyingly effortless way. “Weird…” she finds herself muttering. “How can they be friends? Heejin’s my age.”

Sooyoung frowns just as she shoves another bite into her mouth, then points her chopsticks at Hyejoo. “Girl, did you just imply that _I’m_ weird? I know you didn’t just say that.”

Rolling her eyes, she bats the accusation away. “No, not everything is about you. She just transferred into the university, so I’m surprised she’s friends with a senior. Especially with her attitude.”

“Oh! She’s a transferee?” Sooyoung scoots over closer, leaning over to look at the photo again. “You should be nice to her! She can’t have many friends, and your first one last year was Chaewon.”

Hyejoo fixes a stoney stare at her, a classic move that proved nobody could ever make her do anything that wasn’t her own will. 

“You should talk to her,” the older girl nudges Hyejoo’s side. “Ask her about Kim Lip! Maybe the four of us can hang out?” Sooyoung says grinning wide this time, blinking with innocent eyes.

Hyejoo meets her with a deadpan stare. “Unnie, you’re crazy,” she scoffs, handing back the older girl’s phone as she takes a bite of the sheet of nori between her fingers. “I am not pretending to be nice to Heejin to get you a date, much less spending any time around her more than I already do.”

“ _Come on._ I buy you all this food!” she argues, gesturing to the assortment of snacks on the floor with her chopsticks.

“That’s club money,” Hyejoo replies. “And I thought you started the Mukbang Club so you could find a way to talk to her. What happened to that?”

“It’s working!” Sooyoung points at her phone with a frown. “She followed the Instagram page you made, and now I can check her posts to see what she likes. I just need an excuse to talk to her.”

\--

Much to Sooyoung’s insistence and barrage of texts to convince her, Hyejoo refuses to play into this already long-winded ploy for the older girl to get a girlfriend. She can’t even imagine having a pleasant conversation with Heejin.

When she comes back to the dorm, it’s past midnight. The halls are quiet and empty, its residence in their respective rooms to prepare for the next day of classes. So when Hyejoo walks up to her room, she’s shocked to see Heejin sitting on the floor by the door, her legs folded, knees to her chest.

She slows her walk as she approaches. Heejin’s head slowly falls to the side, and it’s only then that she realizes her eyes are closed, lips slightly parted. When Hyejoo arrives by her, she glances at the door in confusion, lightly jostles the knob to see that it’s still locked. 

Hyejoo purses her lips. Did Heejin lock herself out?

A part of her feels like she should just nudge her awake the same way they deal with the clothes haphazardly thrown on the floor, but she rejects the thought just as quickly. Before she can think much of it, she squats down so she’s level with Heejin, much closer to her sleeping expression.

“Hey,” she says, softer than she has ever spoken to Heejin before. When she doesn’t get a response, she touches the other girl’s shoulder. With a gentle squeeze and a small shake, she continues, “Heejin? Wake up. What are you doing out here?”

Heejin’s eyes slowly open to slits, blinking a few times before they’re fixed on Hyejoo, who tilts her head with matching confusion. 

“Why were you out so late?” surprisingly, is what comes out of Heejin’s mouth, her voice hoarse. Hyejoo detects the underlying annoyance in her voice, blurred as she comes to. It makes the corner of her lips quirk up.

She doesn’t answer the question. “You should get up before the supervisor finds you and takes you away, too,” Hyejoo says.

Heejin lets out a groan, rolls her shoulder to shrug off Hyejoo’s hand. _Still sore, then,_ she thinks to herself with a small laugh. She rests her arms on her knees, and Heejin starts to rub her eyes.

Between seeing her selfie on someone else’s Instagram and finding her vulnerable and now sleepy-groggy here, Hyejoo can’t find it in herself to feel that twinge of discomfort in her chest, the one she had needed to grow accustomed to. “So should I leave you here or…”

“Just open the door,” Heejin whines, more tired than annoyed. Planting her palm on the wall behind her, she pushes herself up to her feet.

Following, Hyejoo pulls out her keys from her pocket and unlocks the door. She pushes it open, intending to being a little demeaning by letting Heejin go in first, but she doesn’t seem to sense it. She only walks straight in, barely paying any attention as she kicks off her shoes at the door, her head hanging back like she was just happy to be out of the hall.

When Hyejoo toes off her shoes, the pair ends up on either side of Heejin’s.

Watching her roommate immediately lay on her bed, Hyejoo spots Heejin’s keys on her desk, clad on a bright pink puff ball keychain with a tiny plastic rabbit. That makes her laugh, too.

“Don’t know how you forgot your keys, that keychain is hard to miss,” she comments, shrugging off her jacket. Just to be a nuisance, just because she knows Heejin is too tired to care, she leaves it on the floor right in the middle of their beds.

Heejin rolls over to her front, her face smushed on the pillow so that it’s facing away from Hyejoo.

Sitting down on her mattress, Hyejoo thinks the conversation over, which was a feat in and of itself. A _conversation_ , if one could call it that. 

Then Heejin speaks up again, voice muffled against the pillow. “I didn’t expect you to come home so late.”

She bites her lips. _Home._ “Why not?” 

“It’s Tuesday,” she answers, the most obvious thing in the world. Like Hyejoo cares about school as much as she does.

Hyejoo nods even though Heejin isn’t looking at her the way she is. “I know.”

“You usually come back earlier than this.”

“I know.” If anything, Hyejoo is amused that Heejin’s choosing to fixate on this. “I was busy.”

A few seconds pass. The air feels delicate without their usual tension. Hyejoo hesitates before speaking again, thinking that the other might’ve already fallen asleep, but she decides that it doesn’t matter.

“How long have you been waiting for me?” she asks.

Heejin only groans in response, moves so that her back is fully facing Hyejoo as she curls around the second pillow next to her.

\--

That night, after Heejin fully falls asleep, Hyejoo closes the light in their room and opens the lamp hanging over her bed. Going over to the desks, she walks freely over the imaginary line that has divided them for the past month now.

Heejin keeps a pad of post-it notes on her desk. Hyejoo knows this because she needed one the other night - had looked over to her roommate concentrating on her notebooks, paying her no mind. She never asked because she knew she wouldn’t get it.

But with Heejin asleep, and Hyejoo having been the one who helped her there, she feels at liberty to go over and pick it up with the pen next to it. When she presses the tip on the paper’s pink surface, it bleeds silver.

_+82 10 2505 8048_

_just in case_


	3. Chapter 3

Turns out Heejin can be ridiculously forgetful when she’s frazzled and stressed. She wasn’t when the semester started, but now Hyejoo can’t go a week without getting a text from her roommate. She decides not to tell her friends, especially not Sooyoung who continues to bother her about Kim Lip who’s become more of a myth to her. The older girl isn’t typically shy, so Hyejoo can only interpret her stalling as taking her time.

Whenever the text comes, it disarms her every time - one would think that texting signified any semblance of closeness, but their messages are as short and nondescript.

_What time do you get back_

_10pm_

_Ok_

Hyejoo isn’t one for schedules. But for some reason, when she tells Heejin she’ll be home at a certain time, she’s there on the dot with her keys already out. Of course, Heejin is always there before her, already waiting but without the impatience that Hyejoo expects.

Forget how much they dislike each other - whenever Heejin looks up with a small sigh like she’s relieved that Hyejoo actually showed up, she can’t help but feel like she’s won something.

In the moments after they enter the room together, the air around them feels as unrestricted as it can be until the next morning.

\--

“Holy shit, she’s strong.”

This isn’t exactly new information about Hyunjin. Ever since Sooyoung discovered that she had a pair of capable arms on her, she’s typically the one who carries the heaviest bags of food and always with their camera equipment squeezed by her elbow to her side. Hyejoo has even seen her throw Chaewon over her shoulder and drop her into bed, which the smaller girl always claims to hate.

But now that she’s watching her roommate jump up and serve a volleyball to the opposite corner of the court, the sound bouncing off and extending through the gym’s high ceiling, Hyejoo observes unhindered admiration on Chaewon’s face as she mutters her awe.

Hyejoo snorts and nudges the other’s jaw with her finger when she notices her mouth doesn’t close right away. Chaewon had asked for her company to Hyunjin’s volleyball practice; apparently, her spirits had been low over the lack of support for the women’s volleyball team.

Hyunjin enrolled in the university on a varsity scholarship, which makes it amazing that she has time to invest in their lowly Mukbang Club, which is 12 members strong now, Sooyoung would say. “I never want to piss Hyunjin off,” Hyejoo comments.

Chaewon nods, captivated by the game, squeezing her arms tighter around her folded legs when Hyunjin receives the ball several feet from where she had been standing, sliding roughly on her front as she does, keeping the ball alive. “You’d be crazy not to stay on her good side,” she replies.

“Is this what this is?” Hyejoo teases, lightly kicking Chaewon’s foot with her own. “You getting on her _super, duper_ good s-”

Chaewon cuts off her jab with a loud, high-pitched scream when Hyunjin jumps high from the back of the court and delivers a quick-play spike that ends with a point to her team. As it wasn’t enough, Chaewon starts shamelessly clapping, completely forgetting that they were the only non-players in the gym. It draws looks from the whole team, some bemused and some annoyed.

When Hyunjin turns to where they’re sitting on the floor and calmly smiles and waves at them - no, just Chaewon, Hyejoo quickly realizes she doesn’t care.

She side eyes her best friend for being so utterly transparent right now, then glances at her phone.

Oh shit.

Staring at the numbers on the screen, the time, _the time_ that absolutely got away from her, she reaches for her bag and starts to stand up. “Uh… Cha, I gotta go,” she says, pushing herself up to her feet.

“Huh?” Chaewon tears her eyes from the court, looking at Hyejoo in confusion. “Do you have somewhere to be?”

Hyejoo takes a second to straighten out her clothes, then she’s already jogging away as she answers, “I have to go do something!”

Nevermind that it was actually just to unlock the door for her roommate. When the crisp night air hits her face, Hyejoo takes a calming breath - what’s an hour, anyway? It’s just an hour. She’s blinked away an hour before.

She settles on a brisk walk along a path lit by streetlights, her breath a little uneven, but not because she rushed to leave. The campus is peaceful at this time of night. If voices can be heard, they’re from a distance, and the quiet that’s left does nothing to stop certain thoughts from surfacing in Hyejoo’s head.

It had been three weeks since Heejin last forgot her keys. When the first week passed, Hyejoo had taken notice, but not enough to say anything about it. Heejin really should stop forgetting her keys, anyway, and Hyejoo isn’t known for being reliable in the slightest.

Another week went by without a text, another week of only labored silence in their shared room, and Hyejoo still noticed. By the next, she was practically scolding herself not to stop keeping track because - well, why should she?

So when her phone beeped early in the afternoon with a message from Heejin, Hyejoo actually steeled herself away from replying right away. But what good would it do to ignore her? Picking fights with Heejin might’ve been mildly entertaining, if only to get her blood boiling and alive to start the day, but her interest in it had worn off. They didn’t even try to piss each other off anymore. All they did was ignore.

She sent a reply, and even though it was just numbers that tell a time, she had to tell herself that it was the only logical response. Hyejoo finds herself so caught up in her thoughts that she breaks off into a jog again. Maybe if she gets there sooner, she can stop thinking about it.

 _Why should I care?_ The same four words repeatedly turn themselves over in her mind as she pulls herself up the stairs two steps at a time. When she nears the right floor, she hears steps traveling across the halls, and it prompts her to take her keys out. She imagines it’s Heejin pacing back and forth, probably angered that she was made to wait for so long.

Getting a clear view of the hall, Hyejoo realizes that the image she had built in her head was one designed to relieve her. Instead, the person walking there is completely unfamiliar, just one of the other students in the dorm, and the space where she had previously found Heejin asleep is empty. It makes her slow down, makes her mind shut off the thoughts that had ravaged it.

She comes to stop in front of the door to her room. Though she has her keys in hand, she tries to turn the knob - locked. Not home.

Hyejoo fishes her phone out of her pocket just as she unlocks the door for herself. No texts, no calls. The room is completely the same as from when she left it earlier. No Heejin. No thoughts of stopping crosses her mind as she goes through her inbox to find the number she wants to call, a number that she hasn’t even bothered saving yet because _why should I care_?

The other line rings. Rings for far too long, she thinks. When it picks up, she’s gripping her phone unreasonably tight. Not immediately hearing a greeting, she starts to realize that this might not be her brightest idea.

Eventually, Heejin speaks up, “Why are you calling me?” She sounds calm, her tone even. It makes Hyejoo clench her teeth.

“You’re not here,” is all she says, a hardness in her words.

“You weren’t either.” Heejin sounds bored. Uninterested. Tired?

Hyejoo purses her lips. She can tell this is one of those moments where she should think about what she says, can hear Yerim’s voice in her head telling her: _Only say what you absolutely mean to say._ Once her shoes are off, Hyejoo drops her bag between the two beds.

“Did it even cross your mind to just text me again? You already do that, it’s not hard,” she says, unable to stop herself from sounding defensive.

“Why?” the other girl asks. “Why couldn’t _you_ say you were gonna be late? I would’ve - I would’ve been fine.” Hyejoo catches the break in Heejin’s voice, her shoulders tensing up just as she hears it. “I wouldn’t have waited there. Like a fucking idiot. I guess everything is a joke to you.”

The guilt is slow to spread through her chest, but she knows immediately that she hates it. Hates it enough that she answers, “Don’t you think I have things to do? I have a whole life here, I can’t just put it all on hold because you decided that your one ditzy quality is that you always forget your goddamn keys.”

The line goes silent save for the heavy breath that Heejin lets out. Hyejoo hangs on to it like a string tied to her ribcage, and it tugs so hard that it hurts.

“You know, Hyejoo. I was actually starting to think that I just had you all wrong,” Heejin starts, calm again. As she listens on, she sits at the edge of her bed and closes her eyes. All she can see is the mad look on her roommate’s face that one morning she had accidentally slept in.

Heejin continues, “But I got your message loud and clear.”

“What’s that?”

“That I shouldn’t let myself rely on somebody who hates everything about me, for some reason.”

For all that it hurts to hear, Hyejoo can’t bring herself to argue back. A few months ago, it would’ve been easy, pure instinct to bite back.

Before resigning to her silence, she asks, “Where are you?” _Should I even expect you back here?_

Heejin’s reply comes as fast, as sharp as a sleep. “Why do you care?”

Without an answer, Hyejoo drops the call.


	4. Chapter 4

The thought of apologizing occurs to Hyejoo a few times during that week, mostly when she’s in the room by herself, which has been happening more often. The hours when she’s alone there stretch a little longer than they usually do, and she suspects Heejin is slumming it out in the library. “Or some other nerd shit,” she says to Chaewon one night when she goes over to her room even when there’s no need to with no roommate to avoid.

But in the rare moments when they do find themselves in their room, both awake, Hyejoo can’t bring herself to say anything. There’s no point appeasing someone who only assumes the worst from her, anyway. It doesn’t take long before Hyejoo feels like she hasn’t gotten a good look at Heejin’s face in weeks.

Even Sooyoung seems to sense that her disposition whenever Heejin is mentioned has changed. Not for the better, either. On one of her periodic explorations of Kim Lip’s Instagram page, she croons when a new picture of Heejin pops. They’re sitting in a cafe with Chaewon and Hyunjin who are huddled together over a phone where they’re watching another episode of _While You Were Sleeping_ instead of studying.

Hyejoo’s reaction, however, turns out a little quieter. “Unnie, I really don’t care. I’m not here to make your life a cliche love story.” she says after she looks up once before training her eyes on her textbook. _The hedgehog’s dilemma, or sometimes the porcupine dilemma, is an analogy about the challenges of human intimacy,_ she reads over and over again, her fingertips absently brushing the corner of the page.

She’s so preoccupied trying to seem preoccupied that she doesn’t notice Chaewon and Hyunjin share long looks with Sooyoung.

\--

Hyejoo’s relationship with her older brother is more or less normal. When she was much younger, she wanted to be exactly like Juyeon - wanted to play with his toys, play out in the street when he did, and even wear his clothes. Her initial idealization of her brother turned out to be a curse, though, when she became a teenager and most of her things were hand-me-downs from him.

As she got older, they picked on each other constantly, and it bore Hyejoo’s hard-headedness. She learned then that she was never going to get anything she wanted if she didn’t stand her ground and learn to shove back. If Juyeon’s sense of brotherly responsibility didn’t kick in sooner, didn’t stop him from picking fights and resisting his little sister’s way, their household might have dissolved into chaos.

Nowadays, Hyejoo is just relieved to be going to a school big enough that she doesn’t have to see him every day.

Juyeon and his friends decide to throw a party the weekend before the entire university crunches down for finals. He lives off campus, choosing to rent out a house with 11 of his friends, which is exactly why Hyejoo rarely visits. But life lately has seemed so monotonous that when Chaewon brings up the open invitation posted on each boy’s social media to the Mukbang Club, Hyejoo thinks it might actually be a good idea to go.

Of course, when Hyejoo tells her brother that she’ll be at her party, he immediately mandates that they bring as many snacks as they can. “I know you have food, I’ve seen your videos on Instagram,” he says. “I like your posts all the time! Do it for your older brother.”

“Oh yeah?” she replies to him over the phone, already glaring. “What would mom say if she knew you’re throwing a huge open rager the weekend before exams?”

“ _Nothing_ because she’s never going to know.” And given what Juyeon knows about her academic delinquencies, she knows better than to rat him out.

Against all odds, Hyejoo does show up to the party with a bag of snacks, Sooyoung, Chaewon, and Hyunjin. The deep pulse of music from inside tells her that nobody is going to bother opening the door for them, so despite Chaewon’s attempts at ringing the doorbell, Hyejoo simply pushes the door open and leads everyone inside.

Upon stepping inside, she can tell that the party still has ways to go before it reaches its full chaotic peak. As it is, college students are scattered on the floor and any furniture surface they can sit on. One side of the living room seems to be reserved for everybody playing PUBG together, which she takes note of, and the other has everyone watching a Knowing Brothers episode on the TV. Impressed, she thinks this is all very responsible of Juyeon and his friends.

Hyejoo goes straight to the kitchen to drop off a few bags of food, Sooyoung in tow. There, she finds Juyeon bent over in front of the microwave to watch the bag of popcorn inside turn and pop. He only looks up when Hyejoo drops everything on the counter at one side of the room, and when he stands up, she detestfully notices that he’s once again gotten taller.

“Joo-yah!” he says, raising his arms, seeming even bigger as if he knows exactly why she has a sour look on her face. Juyeon comes over and immediately puts his wide palms on both of Hyejoo’s cheeks. “How’s the little baby wolf?”

Without hesitating, she shoves off his hands and slaps him on the arm. “Don’t make me regret coming here.”

“Hey, no,” Juyeon reassures, his voice much softer this time. He puts his hands on her shoulders instead, shaking her once as his voice falls into something more open, genine. She used to think it was so annoying, how easily he could make that shift. “I’m glad you’re here. Sooyoung told me you’ve been in dire need of fun and relaxation, so that’s what you’re gonna get.”

Behind her, Sooyoung is pulling out soju and beer from the fridge. Hyejoo moves her glare to her, and the older girl only gives her a sheepish smile. “He asked! I just answered,” she says, bundling the alcohol in her arms against her chest.

Juyeon crosses his arms, brows raised at Hyejoo.

“I don’t wanna talk about it,” she says, facing away with her chin up. She figures there’s no point denying that she does need a break. Grabbing a bag of chips, she turns and walks away saying, “And tell Sunwoo I want a rematch on PUBG!”

\--

Hyejoo regrets to admit that the party isn’t that bad. A few hours into the night and most of the people there are loose and loud on alcohol, but things aren’t as messy as they could be. She’s sitting on a bean bag on the floor, arms flapped over the sides as she takes a break from what turned out to be a sorry game of beer pong - for all of Hyunjin’s strength with balls the size of her head, she struggled to hold her own when it was smaller than her palm.

She thinks she has a bit of time for herself, now that her friends have gone off to different corners of the room, but Sooyoung wanders in looking lost and panicked. When she spots Hyejoo on the floor, she immediately gets on her knees and grabs the other’s arms.

“Kim Lip is here,” she says in a hurried whisper, and Hyejoo has seen her scared during the hours leading up to a dance audition, but never this much before. 

She frowns, confused. “Isn’t that a good thing?”

“Hyejoo.” Sooyoung takes a long, slow breath, but the look in her eyes stays intense, serious. She puts her fingers to her own chest, shaking her head. “I just had a bunch of shots upstairs and I’m about five minutes from being stupid wasted. I don’t think i can do this.”

Looking up at just the right time, sure enough, Hyejoo sees the fabled Kim Lip through the doorway leading out to the rest of the house, her hair in a tight ponytail. From what she can tell, she’s been here for a while without them noticing, loose strands of her hair spilling out of the tight knot. Actually looking at her in real life instead of a screen makes her space out for a second. 

Yet, her heart all but drops when she realizes who she’s with, the sight convincing Hyejoo that god must be playing with her for having crammed every single assignment she’s gotten in the semester. Unconsciously, she grips Sooyoung’s arms back.

“Heejin’s here,” she explains, her gaze still at the doorway through her body is already pulling her up to her feet. “We need to go,” she says, and Sooyoung has no problem following, pushing them through the kitchen and out the backdoor and past the group of party goers there surrounding where Juyeon’s roommates are grilling last minute barbecue.

Hyejoo only realizes how heavy her breath has gotten when she’s away from the packed humidity inside, running her hand down her face. “Fuck,” she mutters. She feels as if a bucket of water had just been thrown at her, but she’s still as unstable, not any more sober.

“What am I gonna do?” Sooyoung cries out, her hands wrapped together in front of her chest like she’s about to lose something if she lets go. “What am I gonna do!”

“What do you mean?” Hyejoo exclaims, the display confusing her more than anything. “This is the moment you’ve been waiting for! You get to talk to the girl you’ve been pining for for months.”

Her words only trigger a deeper sense of fear in Sooyoung’s eyes. The older girl starts to shake her head. “I can’t,” she says. “I can’t.”

“Stop saying everything twice!”

“I’m nervous! Girls like her don’t like girls like me,” she reasons, her body leaning forward, the weight of her anxiety throwing her balance. “Shit, I’m gonna vomit..”

Seeing Sooyoung this uncomposed becomes a comfort for Hyejoo, but it’s not enough to soothe her own anxiety triggered by only one thing: Heejin’s face, the way she’s done up, and the way the smile on her face was open and easy and welcoming - the way Hyejoo only ever seems to see that side of her when it _wasn’t_ her. 

It hits her, then, that she wants to change. She wants things to be so drastically different, unknowing why it riles her up so much that she can’t manage to get on the same footing as her roommate, but all too aware that it all comes down to her. To Heejin.

The thing that usually grips her chest into making her shut up, turn around, and walk away is replaced by a different tightness. It’s the alcohol in the system, Hyejoo’s sure.

“Okay,” she says, her voice quieter than what she expects. “Okay, this - this is what we’re going to do.” Hyejoo grabs Sooyoung’s shoulders with a firm grip, their unsteady gazes taking a minute to fully meet.

“What? What is it?” Sooyoung asks.

“I’m gonna get us as much as water as I can, and we’re gonna fucking sober up.”

\--

The plan only works for two water bottle’s worth of time. Turns out there isn’t enough to go around, and Hyejoo almost gets into a fight next to the fridge with Sangyeon, the oldest of Juyeon’s roommates, when she tries to get more.

Right now, she and Sooyoung are taking turns trying to raise each other’s morale in one of the quieter corners of the house. Thankfully, half the house seems to be distracted by Hyunjin challenging anyone who meets her gaze to an arm wrestling match.

Hyejoo can’t stop herself from looking around them, half hoping the two people they’re hiding from won’t decide to explore the house, half wondering if she’ll get an actual chance to talk to Heejin. Not that she knows what she would say.

“You should just apologize to her,” Sooyoung suddenly says, the rim of the water bottle still touching her lips. She’s calmer, still ways away from sober, but she’s settled into the stage where she won’t stop giving everyone unsolicited advice.

She considers acting clueless, but internally, she’s giving in and agreeing. Maybe she should. Instead, she just shifts her gaze again. “It’s not that simple.”

“Oh, but it is.” Sooyoung closes her eyes and nods as she recaps the water bottle. “You just need to admit what it is exactly that bothers you about that girl.” Hyejoo starts to shake her head, but Sooyoung isn’t having it.

She swings her arm around Hyejoo’s shoulders. She says, “Come on. You can tell me, I can pretend that I was too drunk to remember tomorrow.”

“It’s not happening,” she replies. She sighs, relaxing against her friend. “I don’t even know why she’s here. She’s a fucking… she’s a good student. She actually cares about what happens to her here. Whatever it is that she’s doing, she actually _tries_. She’s not like…” Hyejoo trails off and rests her head on Sooyoung’s shoulder. “She’s not like me.”

Sooyoung squeezes her arm and rubs it firmly, which Hyejoo doesn’t expect, though she doesn’t fight it either. “So what? You’ve never let her get to know you. Isn’t that at least worth a shot?”

Ironically enough, Hyejoo’s silence that follows is enough of an answer; they both know it’s true. “Don’t think I’ve forgotten about you talking to Juyeon-hyung about me,” she says, feeling more like herself again.

“Mm…” Sooyoung moves her arm around Hyejoo’s neck and squeezes there, too. “Any chance you’re drunk enough to forget about that?”

Hyejoo snorts, taking the water bottle away from the other girl to take a long sip. “I will if we talk about your thing.”

“Does it matter?” she whines. “I think I’m better off staying clear from her. You know when you just spend too much time imagining what it would be like to be with someone that you get all… you know, in over your head?”

“No, can’t relate in the slightest. But go ahead.”

Sooyoung rolls her eyes, and Hyejoo doesn’t think she’s aware of how she sways both of their bodies. “I figured. Well, I think after I got rejected for the Christmas show last semester, my self-confidence has been…” She pauses, choosing her words. “Different.”

“Seriously? Unnie, you know the seniors last year only wanted to cast their friends.”

“Well.” Sooyoung looks down and shrugs. “I thought I was good enough that it wouldn’t matter. Maybe I’ve just let myself believe that for too long.”

“Bullshit.” Hyejoo passes back the water bottle, only holding enough for one more gulp. “You _are_ that good, and I bet Kim Lip would agree.”

Sooyoung snorts as she twists the cap off. “Doubt it. I’ve been stalking her Instagram profile enough to know that she’s either straight or strictly into girls who have aegyo,” she says with something that comes between a cringe and a pout.

Hyejoo is about to say more about how, maybe, she can practice her hearts and looks in the mirror until they reach perfection, but she gets cut off. “Hyejoo!” someone calls.

Glancing over, she sees Chaewon looking as closely frazzled as Sooyoung had been earlier. She barely gets her question out, _who do you want to hide from and why_ , before she’s being grabbed by her arm.

“Hey! Ow, what the fuck,” she complains, already being pulled to a direction, Sooyoung looking helpless when she turns to her.

“It’s Heejin!” Chaewon yells, dragging them to where most of the party’s noise is coming from. Just hearing her name throws Hyejoo off balance, feet stumbling and moving on their own as worry inevitably grips her.

“What?” She yanks her arm out of Chaewon’s hands. “What’s wrong?”

The smaller girl shakes her head before she spits out: “Hyunjin challenged her to arm wrestling _and she didn’t say no_.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> orbits, stan the boyz or die :) or follow me on twitter (@kyunaquarius) and remind me to finish this monstrosity


	5. Chapter 5

Half of the whole house must be here, huddled around a small table at the center of the room. Hyejoo suspects that most of the crowd are people who, unfortunately, underestimated Hyunjin’s strength and inevitably met their defeat.

She knows enough about Heejin that she herself isn’t actually arrogant enough to think that; Hyejoo has seen and heard her whine when she had to carry all the library books she borrowed. The other part, the one where Heejin is a pushover people pleaser, she only truly confirms when she sees her sitting across Hyunjin.

The look on her face is nothing short of nervous, unsure, but even then she manages to smile. She’s holding her own hand, caressing it as she listens to Hyunjin try to encourage her. “You look like you can beat me!” she tells her, triggering a few whoops and cheers from the onlookers.

“You really think so?” Heejin says with a small laugh at the end of her sentence.

Without another word, Hyunjin leans over the table and props her elbow on the surface. There’s a crazy look in her eyes, the roundest Hyejoo has ever seen them.

When Heejin tries to mimic her form, the awkwardness in her body is impossible to miss. Seeing it is what immediately zaps into her why Chaewon called her over in the first place. “I have to do something,” she mutters, already fielding the bizarre image of Hyunjin slamming down the other girl’s entire arm, so hyped up that she stands on the table and eats a whole bar of steel that happens to suddenly augment.

Before she can think of what to do, Hyejoo walks closer to the table. “Wait!”

She’s never been the type to do anything to draw the whole room’s attention, but she succeeds then, making her wonder how many people Hyunjin had beat for everyone to seem like they were watching a pro arm wrestling match. It only occurs to her a second after she spoke out that she’s revealing herself to Heejin, too.

It would’ve been nice if she looked relieved to have more time to stall, but the utter surprise that occupies her expression doesn’t make Hyejoo feel any better. Her heart starts to race. As she stops in front of the table, she’s licking her molars and wondering if this is a bad idea.

It probably is.

When Hyejoo catches Heejin’s gaze, she can’t tear away from it. Both her hands circle into fists when she sees no welcome in her eyes, and she feels closer to backing the fuck out of this. Or maybe she should just start apologizing to her right then and there? No, that doesn’t seem right.

“Hyejoo-yah!” Hyunjin calls out, slamming her broad palm on the table, clearly excited to see her. “I’ve been challenging everyone,” she says, raising her right hand up to wiggle her fingers. “Everyone who loses to me in arm wrestling has to come to a volleyball game this semester!”

“Me,” Hyejoo says, only then turning to Hyunjin. “I’m challenging you.” Stiffly, she gestures to Heejin with her hand, the most polite she’s ever referred to her. “On behalf of Heejin.”

To no surprise, Hyunjin’s eyes widen, brows raise, mouth opens in amazement as low gasps erupt from around them. She does know about the severity of their roommate situation, seemingly only connecting the dots in that moment. Hyejoo glares at her not to say anything incriminating.

“Son Hyejoo, you have a deal.” Hyunjin grins. “Of course, as long as she’s okay with it,” she adds, nodding to Heejin.

For all of Hyejoo’s bravery, she can’t bring herself to look at her roommate’s face again. It would be the peak of embarrassment, if Heejin rejected her offering - or would she even interpret it as that? Every second she spends waiting for Heejin’s answer, her acceptance, feels too long.

She only looks over when she hears the chair move as Heejin stands from it, tucking a few strands her ear. Her expression has changed into confusion, and Hyejoo can’t really blame her. She goes over to her, realizing there’s no point to this if she can’t swallow down her own fear.

“Can I talk to you later?” she says only to her, quiet, the uncertainty in her voice betraying her boldness. Regardless, she’s already sitting down to face Hyunjin who’s taking a sip out of a solo cup.

Heejin’s brows jump up, she blinks twice. The strangest thing is how she relaxes into a slight frown. “Only if you win,” she replies, tapping into something inside of Hyejoo that’s familiar despite her quiet tone. _Is that a challenge?_

\--

Hyejoo hasn’t done this in a while, but at least she doesn’t fumble with her form the way Heejin does. After all, during one of her summers as a teenager, every argument she had with Juyeon was decided through an arm wrestle or who could do a handstand the longest; it was easier to win, then, because puberty started late for her brother.

Seeing the sharp focus in Hyunjin’s face triggers the same competitive spirit, except now, Hyejoo would have to find some other opening to talk to her roommate instead of settling to watch a romance drama with a three-hour long-winded plot on the one day they got to go to the cinema. Right now, the former sounds irredeemably worse.

“Let’s fucking do this,” she mutters to herself, locking her hand with Hyunjin’s. When her fingers curl closed, she realizes how the other’s palm spreads just a little wider than hers.

Hyejoo focuses in the dark circles of Hyunjin’s eyes, which seem to get wider, too. “I’m begging you to beat me,” she condescends. 

Her eye twitches. Someone she recognizes to be one of Juyeon’s younger roommates places a firm hand over theirs, steadying them. “Okay, ladies! Ready?” he says in English before code switching back. “On three. One, two, and.... Go!”

The weight that threatens to press her against the table comes immediately. Knowing better than to exert her energy, knowing that this is a matter of hanging on longer than the other, perseverance, all she does is tense up to keep her position.

If she could dig her elbow deep through the table, she would’ve. The angle of her arm gives slightly, making her tense every muscle she can still feel, and it reaches her gut. She tries to smother down a groan that threatens to escape her, gritting her teeth so that it turns into a growl.

Even in this situation, Hyunjin manages a sound of loud surprise. “Huh? You’re so strong!” she raves, but it isn’t any sign of letting up. Her eyes stay where their hands are clasped, the tips of their fingers turning white from the tight hold.

 _Fuck._ Hyejoo forces air out her nose, then in again. Instead of trying to get the upper hand, she straightens her wrist, confirming that Hyunjin’s strength isn’t there at all. From there, it’s easier to put them on equal footing, upright again where she can better hold against the weight.

The whole time, she doesn’t lose track of why she’s sitting there in the first place; in fact, she refuses to let it go, that Heejin is somewhere around them with her eyes only on her, which is why losing isn’t an option.

The longer Hyejoo puts up a fight, the deeper their respective glares carve into their expression. Gnashing her molars, she puts out her other hand and grips the edge of the table for leverage, her torso tilting to the seat. At the other side of the table, Hyunjin’s free hand is in a fist, in front of her, and she bangs it on the table as she bows her head.

“Hyejoo!” she yells, rough at the edges.

 _Just a little longer_ , she thinks to herself, though every second that passes feels like agony, eternity on her arm. If she loses now, she doesn’t think she could forgive herself - and neither would Heejin.

Dangling on her last bit of strength, she squeezes her eyes shut and bursts through what she has left in her. But instead of attempting to slam Hyunjin’s arm on the table, she turns her wrist again, the unrelenting grip they have each other doing nothing to stop the swift movement, so swift that it barely outlives the gasp that starts from the back of the room.

Hyejoo stays in the turn until her palm faces her - and with her eyes closed, she doesn’t wait then to see if this is working, throwing Hyunjin off, only proceeding to bend both of their wrists toward her to negate any strength her opponent has in her shoulder - and when she feels unprecedented lightness against her stubbornness, her insistence, the only way she knows to wrong a right, _Heejin_ , the name ringing like a reminder that there’s still more she can do, no matter how bad she makes it if she cares enough to try - 

_Isn’t that at least worth a shot?_ Even as the back of Hyunjin’s hand hits the table, Hyejoo feels as if she’s still mid fall after her hand loses grip, letting go. 

The cheers ring out all out once, but they sound strangely far away. It takes her a moment to realize her body from the chest up is flat against the table, her breathing quick and warm against the surface. She feels a few people shake her with congratulations with hands quickly brushing her back, but she barely feels it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this is super short bc this is where i ran out of steam haha <3 i love you matt this is for you I'LL MAKE IT BETTER AND FINISH IT, I PROMISE


End file.
